Writing on the wall: Mathieu Tremblin's 'Tag Clouds' and the politics of cultural assimilation. (November 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Matheron, Aurelie
• Is Part Of: French cultural studies. Volume 30:Number 4(2019)
• Page Start: 317
• Page End: 334
• Publication Date: 2019-11
• Subjects: banlieue -- French visual culture -- opacity -- sameness -- Tag Clouds -- tags; France -- Civilization -- 1945- -- Periodicals; 306.094405
• DOI: 10.1177/0957155819861035
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0957-1558

Abstract

This article explores how French street artist Mathieu Tremblin's Tag Clouds satirises mainstream French media's and right-wing politicians' representations of the French banlieue . As Tag Clouds erases tags and writes over them in a more legible font, I argue that it performs visual sanitisation to satirise the politics and aesthetics of French visual culture affecting urban settings and banlieues . Politicians' and media's amalgamation of banlieue with immigration, violence and poverty extends to banlieue visual culture. Tag Clouds' erasure of tags, I argue, challenges how French visual culture relies on an 'economy of sameness' (Brown, 2006) and the formatting of different cultural, racial and political identities into a unique, transparent model of citizenship. Tag Clouds reveals how sameness affects banlieue environments and visual culture. Ultimately, I demonstrate how Tag Clouds ironically calls for recognising the taggers' 'right to opacity' (Glissant, 1990) and their right to refuse to conform to mainstream French visual culture norms.